The Milwaukee Bucks haven’t won more than two straight games since Feb. 6 and in the last 29 games have followed a victory with a loss 10 times. They’ve won four in a row just twice this season, most recently after Joe Prunty replaced the fired Jason Kidd in January.

Anyone who follows the team even casually knows all about its ups and downs, its lapses in focus and effort, its listless opening quarters.

So how are the Bucks supposed to beat the Boston Celtics four times and advance to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2001? Are they even capable of “locking in” – the term so many of them are throwing around – for 48 minutes, game after game, possession after possession?

Forget about matchups. Forget about Kyrie Irving being out. This series, starting with Game 1 at noon Sunday at TD Garden in Boston, is going to be about the Bucks’ ability to “lock in” and remain disciplined and determined for as many as seven games over the next 14 days.

“We’ve got to step on their necks,” guard Eric Bledsoe said. “I think sometimes we take teams lightly or relax because they don’t have those type of (great) players. We think it’s going to be easy for us. I feel like we’ve just got to step on their necks.”

You know Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to be ready for this. He’d step on necks in a pickup game. And there’s a lot to like about the players around him, when you break them down individually. But it’s their maddening tendency to play as if their backs were against a beach hammock instead of a wall that gives you pause.

Judging by social media, a lot of Bucks fans have given up hope that this team is going anywhere but home on April 28, if not sooner. Call me crazy, but I think it’s a winnable series.

The Bucks lucked or skillfully jockeyed (take your pick) their way into the No. 7 seeding. For now, at least, they avoid top-seeded Toronto and No. 3 Philadelphia, the hottest team in the league. And you know LeBron James and the fourth-seeded Cavaliers are not going to lose a first-round playoff series. It’s just not going to happen.

Also, in case you haven’t noticed, the Bucks actually have played pretty good basketball over the last three weeks, that 130-95 spanking by the 76ers in the season finale notwithstanding. They are 7-4 over their last 11 games including the beatdown, which may or may not have involved a smidgen of tanking or at the very least a dose of we-don’t-care-ism.

“When a team is already on a 15-, 16-game winning streak it’s going to be tough, getting guys back from injuries, going into one of those types of games and get a rhythm,” Bledsoe said, referring to guards Malcolm Brogdon and Matthew Dellavedova.

Whatever. The fact is the Bucks beat three playoff teams, including the Celtics, down the stretch.

“Take the last game out against Philadelphia,” Prunty said. “I think we can all agree that wasn’t a very good game. Prior to that in our 10 previous games we played very well. Other than a couple of stretches where either we didn’t close it out or didn’t execute as well or didn’t get a stop, we probably could have won those games (we lost) as well.

“I think we’re playing well. I think we’re playing, for the most part, the right way.”

“We have the ability to affect the game on the defensive end and be way more impactful than other teams,” Brogdon said. “I think our length and our size and our youth, we have to use that to our advantage.”

The Bucks lost to Toronto in a first-round playoff series last year because after taking a 2-1 lead they didn’t match the Raptors’ energy and effort in Games 4, 5 and 6. If it was a lesson learned, it didn’t show in the regular season. But the postseason is another animal.

Will the Bucks be able to dial up the intensity and keep it there?

“I think how we play the first four or five minutes of the first quarter of the first game of the playoffs is going to say a lot about our focus and how locked in we are,” Brogdon said.